APD: Guns Taken Off The Street, Out of Teens’ Hands

Especially in the wake of the news from South Florida, it’s good to hear that officers are taking guns out of the hands of teenagers.

According to a Facebook post by the Aurora Police Department, officers had a very productive span of about five-and-a-half hours on Monday, Feb. 12.

Between around 5:50 p.m. and 11:15 p.m. that day, the APD took two guns off the streets and charged two juveniles and one adult with illegally possessing them.

The first case actually started around 3:08 p.m. when officers were dispatched to a stolen motor vehicle report in the 400 block of Jackson Street. A 47-year-old man reported that, between 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., someone stole his 1995 Jeep Cherokee from the street in front of his home. (He also added that he left the keys to the vehicle in its ignition.)

At around 5:50 p.m., a couple of our community policing officers spotted a Cherokee matching the description of the stolen one going northbound near Broadway and Pierce. When they checked the plates, they indeed confirmed it was the same vehicle that was stolen. When they tried to pull it over in the 900 block of Aurora Avenue, the driver took off and led officers on a short pursuit that a supervisor terminated.

A couple of minutes later, one of the patrol officers came across the same vehicle stuck in a snow bank at Church and Indian Trail with four subjects running from it. Three of the subjects were caught and one of them, a 16-year-old Aurora boy, was found to have a loaded .380 in his pocket.

The boy was charged through the Kane County State’s Attorney with two counts of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and a single count of possession of a stolen motor vehicle, which are all felonies, and he was taken to the youth home. He and his two cohorts, both boys ages 13 and 15, were all charged with misdemeanor obstructing the police. The two younger boys were released to a parent. The fourth subject was not located.

Then around 8:30 p.m., Aurora officers responded to a Near East Side home after a relative of a 16-year-old boy found a gun in the boy’s bedroom. The relative took the magazine out of the gun and kept it but put the gun back where he found it.

When the boy found the magazine gone, he became enraged with the relative who refused to give the magazine back. The boy then left the house with the gun.

Police eventually located the boy hiding in a friend’s basement about two miles away, but never found the firearm. Nonetheless, based on the relative’s statement, the boy was charged with two counts of unlawful use of a weapon which are felonies, and a single count of disorderly conduct.

At 11:15 p.m., Anthony McKnight, 18, of the 1300 block of Monomoy, Aurora, was charged with two counts each of aggravated unlawful use of a weapon and unlawful possession of a firearm and a single count of resisting police, after a gun was found underneath the seat of a car in which he was sitting.

Special Operations Investigators saw the driver of the car, a 17-year-old Montgomery girl, fail to signal and pulled it over. McKnight was a front seat passenger and was on parole, so the investigators searched him. He at first refused to exit the vehicle but eventually did after repeated demands.

Based on the charges, the Illinois Department of Corrections issued a no bond warrant. He is being held at the Kane County Correctional Center.

The charges are not proof of guilt. The defendants are presumed innocent and are entitled to fair trials at which it is the burden of the state to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.